Conservative MP Danny Kruger has defected to Reform UK.
Kruger has been an MP since 2019, and sits on Kemi Badenoch’s team as a shadow work and pensions minister.
“The Conservatives are over,” he told a press conference, sitting alongside Reform party leader Nigel Farage.
Kruger said he had been “honoured” to be asked to help Reform prepare for government, and said he hoped that Farage would be the next prime minister.
The East Wiltshire MP – a former political secretary to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister – said the Conservatives were no longer the principal party of opposition.
He said: “There have been moments when I have been very proud to belong to the Tory party”, but added: “The rule of our time in office was failure.
“Bigger government, social decline, lower wages, higher taxes and less of what ordinary people actually wanted.”